CHARLES BEATTY ALEXANDER 
KASPAR VON SCHWENKFELD 
HIS LIFE, CHRISTOLOGY 
AND THEOLOGY 














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In considering any body of exiles, one’s 
mind naturally drifts to thoughts of other exiles. 
Those who accompanied Jason were in pursuit 
of the Golden Fleece, and from the happy, 
comfortable and even wealthy environment of 
members of your society, it would seem as if 
your ancestors too had discovered, if not the 
Golden Fleece, a reasonable deposit of gold. 
They brought with them far more than they 
have since found. ‘They came poor in worldly 
goods. ‘They had no money for their passage, 
but they brought gifts richer than gold or 
raiment. ‘The little company brought invisible 
gifts of music, science, godliness, toleration, 
love of one’s neighbors, healing power, teach- 
ing skill, love of children, courage, thrift, com- 
passion and invention. ‘This is in part their 
contribution to the Spirit of America, and with- 
out such possessions our country would be poor 
indeed. 

Then one thinks of the Pilgrim Fathers. 
All early American history has been so largely 
in the hands of New England writers, especially 
those of Cambridge, that other exiles from the 


old country, in olden days, have had very little - 
chance of proper appreciation. The Schwenk- 
telders had the misfortune, however, of landing 
too far away from the best publicity bureau of 
their times. It is the irony of fate that the Pul- 
orim Fathers were trying for a port farther 
south when the winds and waves led them 
to Plymouth and fame. Had your ancestors 
landed on Plymouth Rock, every child at every 
school would be fed up on their high emprise 
and their lofty faith. But they have had to 
share the fate of the Scotch Irish, who came to 
Pennsylvania, and who hardly got any histor- 
ical credit until Theodore Roosevelt’s book on 
the making of the northwest and the efforts of 
the Scotch Irish Society managed in a measure 
to restore them to the map. 


It is, therefore, highly praiseworthy on the 
part of the members of your society to keep the 
Schwenkfeldian flag nailed to the mast. It isa 
fine tribute to the idealistic and exalted atmos- 
phere of the best blood in Pennsylvania that in 
this materialistic age, and in this city of vast 
present and potential wealth, there should be a 
sroup of men and women interested enough in 


the life and work of Schwenkfeld and his fol- 


fs 


lowers to come out this evening to hear a wan- 
dering stranger from a neighboring city seek 
to make a contribution to the object of their in- 
terest and quest. 

Among the early enthusiastic advocates of 
the Reformation was Kasper von Schwenkfeld, 
a councilor at the court of the Duke of Lieg- 
nitz in Silesia. At the time of Luther’s mani- 
festo he was young man, 25 years of age, and 
threw himself into the new movement with 
energy. Although never ordained as a clergy- 
man, he took a prominent part in religious 
work, and it was mainly through his efforts 
that the Reformation gained a stronghold in 
Silesia. He was, however, independent in his | 
thinking, and developed certain lines of belief ( 
which were not acceptable to other reformers. 

Strongly opposed to the formation of a 
church, he did no more than gather congrega- 
tions, and was compelled to flee from one place 
to another to escape persecution, until he died 
in Ulm in 1561. After his death, under the 
conditions of the times, any ecclesiastical or- 
ganization of his followers was impracticable, 
although meetings and occasional conferences, 
were held in Silesia, Switzerland and Italy. 


3 


Early in the eighteenth century the question 
arose of emigration to America, and in Sep- 
tember, 1734, about 200 persons landed at 
Philadelphia. Allegiance to the civil au- 
thorities having been pledged, they devoted the 
next day after their arrival to thanksgiving 
for their deliverance from oppression, George 
Weiss taking the lead, and they have continued 
to celebrate a memorial day ever since. Unable 
to secure land as they desired for a distinct com- 
munity, they obtained homes in Montgomery, 
Bucks, Berks, and Lehigh Counties, Pa., where 
the greater number of their descendants are now 
to be found. ‘The character of their early life 
in this country is indicated by their literary and 
doctrinal activities, the adoption of a school sys- 
tem in 1764, and the establishment of a charity 
fund in 1774, through which they have since 
cared for the unfortunate members of the com- 
munity. 

The Spirit of America is a sacred essence 
distilled from the perfect flowers of many 
lands and many climes. It is not an easy thing 
to define true Americanism for it is a com- 
posite of the best that has been thought and 
done in the old world, brought to a higher 


4 


perfection by the influence of the greater 
freedom and richer resources of the new civil- 
ization. Anthropologists tell us that in Amer- 
ica there has been developed a new type of man 
and woman. ‘The American of today is differ- 
ent physically as well as mentally and morally 
from any of the Old World stock. And he 1s 
not merely different but physically bigger, 
more efficient, of a higher order. If you ask 
how, or under what conditions this transforma- 
tion takes place, the answer is that it is the in- 
evitable result of life in America, and that time 
will affect the change in any normal family of 
immigrants. The new “American” has been 
defined as any person whose ancestors on both 
sides were born in America for at least two 
generations, or whose parents and four grand- 
parents were all native-born. You will each 
recognize that you all “belong’”’. 

When your first immigrant, George Scholtz, 
came in 1731 to spy out the promised land, 
the new Eden of Pennsylvania, he found not 
a new nation but a queer jumble of scattered 
racial groups. The English were the most 
numerous but even here there were many 


Scotch, Scotch-Irish, Irish and Welsh. ‘There 


5 


were settiements of Spanish, French, Dutch, 
Swedes and Germans. There were various 
physical types, from the light-haired, tall, long- 
headed north-European to the round-headed, 
brown-eyed, dark-haired Gauls or the still 
darker Mediterranean type. Scholtz could 
scarcely have seen in America any promises of 
a unified people and a new democracy. He 
must have thought of the New World as a stage 
where each race, if only it could hold itself 
apart and separate, might hope for mastery 
and dominion over some part of the continent. 
Yet hardly had your second little group of 
fourteen arrived in 1733 and your forty-nine 
families completed their great migration 1734- 
1737 and found new homes and friends among 
the Moravians and Quakers, when Old Eng- 
land was startled by the defiance, not of English 
or European colonists in the new world, but by 
a new nation and race of Americans. The 
little nationalistic groups had established con- 
tacts and friendships, old-world social distinc- 
tions had been forgotten, there was a common 
language in use, and men and women began to 
feel new communities of interest and habit. 
Inter-marriages were common, and from the 


6 


American Revolution sprang a new united 
people—The American Nation. 

It has seemed to me that it might be worth 
while to inquire what part you have played and 
are playing in this forming of a new nation, a 
new and better civilization. I could not pre- 
sume, 1n my ignorance, to compete with your 
long line of native historians, who for nearly 
two hundred years have recounted each year 
on the day of remembrance, the history of your 
transplanting from old-world tyranny to new- 
world freedom. I have sought in this address to 
become the interpreter of the faith that burned 
so brightly and so nobly inthe villages of Silesia, 
Bethelsdorf and Gorlitz, in Saxony, and on the 
frontier of Penn’s colony in contact with the 
Indians, whose raids and massacres your fore- 
fathers found less ferocious than the persecution 
trom which they had fled. I could tell vou little 
of vour great founder, Kaspar Schwenkfeld, 
that is not as familiar as an oft-told tale. I can 
only pay in passing my tribute of respect and 
admiration to him as a profound thinker, a dili- 
gent author, a man after the true pattern of his 
Master, Jesus, a Saint of Saints, who for truth’s 
sake suffered iniquity gladly, endured pain and 


7 


persecution, and uttered no reproach. Huis 
cause is the cause of us all—religious liberty,— 
toleration,—brotherhood. He stands among 
the foremost of that handful of men who could 
not to be tortured or maneuvered into any ex- 
pression of hate, scorn or unfriendliness for 
any fellow-man,—even his persecutors. 

In the days of the great debate between 
Luther, Zwineli, John Huss and Melanchthon; 
and Rome, Kaspar Schwenkfeld played an 1m- 
portant part. It is not easy to measure accu- 
rately the greatness of his influence, but it is a 
fair inference that the violence of his perse- 
cutors 1s the measure of the potency of his sweet 
reasonableness. He founded no church, he 
never posed as a priest or churchman, he hoped | 
for a community of good men and women living 
daily the life of the great teacher, Jesus. 

To an impartial observer like myself, you 
Schwenkfeldians are of intriguing interest. 
You are, in the biblical sense, a peculiar people. 
You fulfil the parable of the mustard seed, for 
your ancestors were one of the smallest of the 
well defined immigrant groups, and you have 
become in two centuries as numerous almost as 
the sands of the sea. You were the first fruits 


8 


of the Protestant Reformation in Silesia but the 
ceaseless persecution that was your birthright 
kept you few in numbers and dispersed and 
hidden in various villages. 

Transplanted to America, we have the same 
little community, again somewhat scattered by 
lack of convenient farm lands, speaking the 
old-world language, living, as far as might be, 
the old-world life. Each. family was at once a 
school, a business and a church. The educa- 
tion of the children, reading of the Scriptures 
and religious books, the singing of the familiar 
old Schwenkfelder hymns and the meetings to- 
gether for the cultivation of the inner light 
were as much a part of daily family life as sow- 
ing, ploughing and harvesting. ‘The new com- 
munity prospered and increased in numbers. 
Asa religious body it has never been numerous. 
The inner circle of the faithful has been too 
true to the non-proselyting spirit of the great 
founder to seek churchly. power or glory. And 
for this faithfulness it has paid the inevitable 
price, for the living descendants of the original 
exiles vastly outnumber the adherents of the 
Schwenkfelder cult. The meaning of this fact 
is significant of the process of American- 


2 


ization, or the building of the new American 
race and the new American civilization, for it 
means that you have given richly of the best of 
your blood, arts and ideals to the country of 
your adoption. Some measure of the gift you 
have made can be drawn from that important 
chronicle of your history in America, the 
“Genealogical Record of the Schwenkfelder 
families”. I find there confirmation of the 
statement of your historian, Howard Wiegner 
Kriebel that: | 
“Descendants were and are found in all 
walks of life—some even having done time in 
prison cells. An attempt indeed was made at 
collating a list of prominent descendants, with 
a view of inserting the same in this history 
but for a variety of reasons this had to be 
abandoned. ‘The classification of the skilled 
professions pursued by these would show 
eminent lights in callings like the following: 
Artisans, artists, authors, doctors, editors, in- 
ventors, judges, governor, lawyers, legislators, 
ministers, missionaries, manufacturers, musi- 
clans, merchants, presiding elders, bishops, 
president and professors of theological semi- 
naries, professors in colleges and seminaries, 


10 


teachers, soldiers both in the ranks and as 
officers.” | 

Schwenkfeld literature was extensive and 1n- 
teresting. It is reproduced for the most part 
in manuscript in huge folios, written often 
upon paper made at the Rittenhouse paper 
mill, on the Wissahickon, the earliest in Amer- 
ica. These volumes sometimes contained 1,000 
pages, bound in stamped leather with brass 
corners and brass mounting. Among the 
notable facts connected with their history 1s 
that they prepared here a written description of 
all the writings of Schwenkfeld and their other 
authors, and it is, as far as I know, the first at- 
tempt at a bibliography in this country. 

I have alluded to the first service of thanks- 
giving. Where this service was held does 
not appear to be recorded. The Court House 
then stood at the present Second and Market 
Streets. . [hey may have met in ‘the Friends’ 
Meeting House close by, in one of the other 
churches or perchance in the woods only a 
short distance above Market Street. Philadel- 
phia, then only fifty years old, had perhaps 
13,000 inhabitants with farms, fields and woods 
reaching practically down as far as the present 


11 


Vine Street, most of the 1,500 houses being 
south of High Street as Market was then called. 
Concerning this day of prayer, or Gedachtniss- 
Tag as it was commonly called, Hon. 8. W. 
Pennypacker wellsays: “There were many sects 
which were driven to America by religious 
persecutions, but of them all the Schwenk- 
felders are the only one which established 
and since steadily maintained a Memorial Day 
to commemorate Is deliverance and give thanks 
to the Lord for it.’ 

Small gifts are often best, and Mawes Week 
is so lately with us that I recall first among the 
achievements of your agriculturists the produc- 
tion of the Wagner apple, succulent within as 
it is beauteous in its autumnal appeal. ‘Iwo 
states share this honor, for if Pennsylvania 
produced Squire Abraham Wagener, New 
York State adopted him and owes to him the 
founding of Penn Yan and the planting of the 
famous old parent Wagener apple tree whose 
descendants still uphold throughout the land 
the virtues of the Schwenkfelder stock. While 
speaking of agriculture, the most common oc- 
cupation of your forefathers, may I mention 
the inventive and scientific genius of many of 


12 


the families, that ranged from sun dials to or- 
gans and implements in the Krauss family and 
from clocks and cash registers to grain thresh- 
ers in the Hubner family. Many are your 
eminent physicians and teachers of medicine, 
for healing of the body has ever been akin to 
the healing of the soul. Of many I shall men- 
tion only two, Dr. John L. Masters, Clinical 
Professor of Otology at Indiana University 
School of Medicine, and Dr. James M. Anders, 
eminent professor of medicine in the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania medical school, officer of 
the French Academy, author and founder of 
Oumannuale blealth= Day *. 

You have made rich contributions to Amer- 
ican © music; sacred, mulitary and secular. 
George Weiss, author of 178 hymns, died in 
Pennsylvania. Balzer Hoffman was also a 
hymn writer, and his son Christopher Hoffman 
gathered together your best sacred music in a 
manuscript hymn book of 1760. Governor 
Pennypacker describes the volume in the fol- 
lowing words: “This hymn book, which may 
be said to represent the art of the Middle Ages, 
extended into the 18th century and across the 
Atlantic—is the best specimen of their manu- 


13 


scripts known. It was written between 1758 and 
1760 in Pennsylvania and was bound here and 
the clasps and mountings were made here. 
Christopher Hoffman came to Pennsylvania at 
six years of age so that his art was learned here. 
It is, except as to literature, purely a Pennsy]- 
vania product.” Christopher .Schultz had 
printed the first American Schwenkfelder 
hymn book in 1762. American hymn writers 
include beside George Weiss and Balzer Hoff- 
man, David Seibt, Gaspar and Christopher 
Kribel, Abraham Wagener, Christopher 
Schultz and George Meschter. ‘The racial gift 
of music has found expression in other forms. 
Many of the great military bands of the civil 
and world war periods were composed wholly 
or partly of Schwenkfeldians. Some of us have 
heard the unrivaled music of the great band 
master, Horace R. Anders. | 

But it 1s in the field of public and social 
service that I note particularly the spirit of 
your community. Henry J. Stager com- 
memorated both the glory of General Wash- 
ington and your share in the Revolution when 
he brought about the establishment of Valley 
Forge park. You have given two Superin- | 


14 


tendents of Public Instruction to Porto Rico, 
George C. Groff, Professor and acting presi- 
dent of Bucknell University, and Hon. Martin 
G. Brumbaugh, late Governor of Pennsylva- 
nia. David D. Wagener was a Congressman 
to the 23d, 24th, 25th and 26th Congresses. 
Among the Justices of Courts of Pennsylvania, 
I find the names of Honorable Christopher 
Heydrich and my friend, Judge William W. 
Porter, Vice President of this Society, whose 
only too affectionate regard has obtained for 
me the invitation to be your guest. 

To America in the dark days of the Civil 
War you gave a great financier, William G. 
Deshler, confidential agent and advisor of the 
Secretary of the ‘Treasury, and a great soldier, 
Major-General John F. Hartranft, twice elected 
Governor of Pennsylvania. 

Schwenkfeld’s literary style is rather loose 
and hard to understand at times, because he 
rejects the usual theological terms and uses 
familiar biblical words in a sense peculiar to 
himself—z. e., in a mystical sense. But of all 
the dissenters of the Reformation, he is the most 
systematic in the presentation of his views. 


15 


Stating his doctrines in general, and broadly 
speaking, they are a renewal of German mysti- 
cism, under the influence of the new theological 
formulas of his age, and deal specially with the 
question of the person of Christ, as this ques- 
tion came up for discussion in the various 
churches of the time, in connection with the 
diverse views of the Lord’s Supper. 

Schwenkfeld often refers to the four chief 
church parties of his time, with no one of which 
he could be satisfied: — 


(1) The Lutherans—He felt that Luther’s 
doctrine of justification by faith alone was a 
one-sided affair and led men to sin “that grace 
might abound”. He criticized the Lutherans 
for letting the state have so much to do with 
church matters and for their mistaking the “‘his- 
torical” for a “vital” faith in Christ. 


(2) The Roman Catholics — Schwenkfeld 
had become too thorough a Protestant ever to 
become satisfied again with the Roman Catho- 
lic Church, though as late as 1528 he said that 
‘Tf only Rome would grant freedom of con- — 
science” he would sooner be a Roman Catholic 
than a Lutheran. 


16 


(3) The Anabaptists—(1. e., forerunners of 
the later Baptists)—-He had much in common 
with them and demanded toleration for them. 
But he was opposed to their minute regulation 
of the outward life of the Christian, their ex- 
clusiveness, and their lack of what he regarded 
as fundamental, namely a “spiritual knowledge 


of the Word”’. 


(4) The Zwinghans and Calvinists — 
Schwenkfeld seldom names Calvin and prob- 
ably knew little of the Genevan’s distinctive 
doctrines, though their views have a marked 
external resemblance. The chief difference 
pertained to the nature of the Lord’s Supper 
and the person of Christ. 

It will be most convenient to sum up and 
criticize his theology from the point of view of 
the question that became the chief divider of 
theological opinion in those days of contro- 
versy, namely the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. 
We begin with his conception of the sacraments 
in general, as this will give up the presupposi- 
tions of his whole system of theology. 

Schwenkfeld disliked the term “means of 
grace’. Asa mystic, he felt that salvation is 


17 


not to be sought through any external things 
whatsoever, but solely through the person of 
Christ as Mediatot, who is the only ‘door’, 
“means” or “way” through whom we can draw 
nigh to God. He opposed all ceremonials as 
in the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran 
Churches. He therefore, like the Anabaptists, 
also rejected baptism of infants as being a bit of 
ceremonialism or magic, having no true spirit- 
ual significance. The external church and her 
sacraments as “means” were negligible. 


He was thus dissatisfied with all four of the : 


above parties because they made too much of 
outward things, including even the letter of 
Scripture as against its spirit. 

His basal idea is that we must distinguish 
between the Scripture and the Word of God; 
the former is the letter, the latter ‘gives us the 
real spirit of the revelation. ‘This 1s the starting 
point of his mysticism: the difference between 
the “outer” Scripture and the “inner” Word. 
He felt that. Luther after 1522 was giving up 


this distinction, and thus getting back to the | 
medieval idea that the Bible as interpreted by © 
the hierarchy was a sort of magical power. — 


SI tre etree or pn RT 


2 


mercer vert rratinnen nant 


And as a matter of fact it became the common | 


18 


Lutheran conception that the Spirit of God 1s 
bound to the Word and the Sacraments, so that 
these themselves contain the supernatural grace 
which saves the believer. Schwenkfeld says: 
“He who has heard or read only the external 
word (that is the letter of Scripture) and not 
also the inner word (that 1s Christ speaking 
through the Holy Spirit) has not heard the 
Gospel of grace nor has he received or under- 
stood it.” Thus corresponding to the inner 
and outer word are two kinds of faith, two kinds 
of knowledge of Christ, two kinds of Bible in- 
terpretation—that of the letter and that of the 
Spirit. Schwenkfeld is not a Quaker, looking 
for an immediate revelation from “the inner 
light”; the light he prizes is that given to the 
reader of the Bible who gets hold of the inner 
word and is not satisfied with the mere letter of 
Scripture. True knowledge of Christ—that of 
the Spirit—will therefore always harmonize 
with the testimony of Scripture when it is prop- 
erly, z. e., spiritually discerned. 

Let us connect with this view of the word his 
view of the sacraments. “For a complete sac- 
rament,” he says, “two things are necessary, an 
inner and spiritual element and an outer and 


19 


bodily element.” To get any benefit from the 
sacraments, therefore, faith. 1s necessary to 
secure the inner content of the sacrament as 
distinguished from the outer element. Exter- 
nal baptism alone cannot wash away sins. And 
so in the Supper: there are “two different kinds 
of bread, or food, and drink: namely, a spirit- 
ual, divine, heavenly bread, food, and drink, 
which is the body of Christ given for us, and his 
sacred blood shed for the forgiveness of sins: 
and a bodily and sacramental bread and drink, 
which the Lord Jesus before his departure com- 
manded his disciples to break, to eat, and to; 
drink, in remembrance of him.” The former! 
is the bread which zs the Lord; the latter 1s only 
bread of the Lord. 

The sacraments are signs of spiritual reali- 
ties, but unless there 1s genuine, spiritual, as dis- 
tinguished from a mere historical, faith, there 
is no benefit whatever from the sacraments, ex- 
cept in so far as they point to their real spiritual 
meaning. Here we see how closely Schwenk- 
feld resembles Calvin in his doctrine of the 
sacraments and faith. Both, as against the 
Roman Catholics and Lutherans, emphasize 
the possibility and reality of the direct operation 


20 


of God upon the believer’s heart. ‘They further 
agreed in making the whole Christ the content 
of the sacraments, and in making the work of 
the spirit a distinguishing feature of the “means 
of grace”. Both, too, affirmed the spirituality 
of the whole process of salvation and main- 
tained that there is no grace in the sacraments 
ywhich the\believer cannot get without them. 
é Calvin’s superiority lay chiefly in his much 
‘clearer and .more Scriptural idea of faith as 
conviction founded on testimony and enriched 
with a personal trust, while Schwenkfeld made 
faith a kind of mystical substance uniting the 
believer with the substance of ee 
We come to the heart of the whole matter 
when we raise the question that led to the most 
bitter controversy of all—How is Christ pres- 
ent at the sacrament oftheSupper? Thisbrings 
us to Schwenkfeld’s idea of the person of Christ, 
his most marked theological peculiarity. 
Christ, he says, being conceived by the Holy 
Ghost, belongs to the order, not of “created”, 
but of “begotten” beings. ‘Truly divine as the 
eternal Son of God, he was born of the Virgin 
Mary, specially sanctified for the purpose, so 
that his flesh is different from all human flesh. 


2] 


It had a different origin and has different 
capacities. {He thus virtually denies that Christ 
is consubstantial with man, though he concedes 
that he is consubstantial with God) In a word 


| his mysticism here resolves into one of those 


paradoxes that the history of mysticism so often 
presents to us: the Savior’s Aumanity is in the 
strictest and most absolute sense divine. In this 
way he bridges the gap between man and God. 


‘His words are: “When I say that Christ’s flesh 


is deified, that his flesh has become God, I mean 
nothing else than that the human nature of 
Christ has become altogether similar to the 
divine nature in glory.” Here he is opposed to 
all four of the parties named at the outset. He 
conceives this deification of the flesh of Christ 
as a gradual process, as the development of the 
divine principle implanted in his mother by the 
Holy Ghost. By way of criticism we must say 
that either the one or the other of these two 
familiar words “flesh” and ‘divinity’? must 
mean something other than the meaning ordi- 
narily connected with them ; or else we have 
an unwarranted equation, namely: humanity 
equals divinity. 


On the surface, this Christology of Schwenk- 
feld’s seems to be close to Luther’s; for Luther 
taught that Christ’s human body was ubiqu1- 
tous, so that it can be corporeally present wher- 
ever the Lord’s Supper is being observed. - 
Luther, therefore, also seems to give the hu- 
manity of the ascended Lord the property of a 
virtual omnipresence, so that the body can do 
what really only a divine person can do—be in 
more places than one at the ~<ame time. But 
while Luther in his later years—after the con-- 
troversv on the Supper had run its course— | 
taught the presence of the body of Christ in the 
Supper in such a sense that it “can be distrib- 
tices catcn sand: masticated by ithe’ teeth’ 

<\Schwenkfeld insisted that the Lutheran doc- 
trine is contrary (1) to the content of Scripture; ‘ 
(2) to the nature of the true Word (as dis- 
tinguished from the letter of the Scripture) ; 
(3) to the priesthood of Christ; (4) to the char- 
acter of genuine faith; (5) to the honor and 
olory of God; and: (6) to the institution of the 
Supper and the faith of the early Church. 

In reality Schwenkfeld’s view of the Supper 
is much nearer to Calvin’s, namely in these re- 
spects: the consecration of the elements means 





Ree 


blessing them to a holy use, but not transub- 
stantiating them (asthe Roman Catholic 
Church held) or uniting ‘with, in, and under 
them” the body of Christ (as Luther held); 
' the elements represent a spiritual, heavenly 
reality, which faith can appropriate without 
the sacrament if need be; and lastly that the 
real benefit of the sacrament is the appropria- 
tion of the benefits of Christ’s sacrificial death. 
Calvin and Schwenkfeld differed in their in- 
terpretation of the words of institution. Cal- 
vin taught that the elements are symbols. of 
the broken body and shed blood of Christ, 
and that the sacrament is effectual only to 
faith—the faith that knows and trusts itself 
to the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice, faith 
being an intellectual and volitional act of the 


recipient soul~But Schwenkfeld held that! 


when Christ spoke the words of institution, he | 


t 


really meant: “My body is this, namely, bread i 


\ 


or true nourishment for the soul; my blood is 
this, namely, drink or true refreshment for the 
soul.” Schwenkfeld makes the “is”, in the 
clause “This is my body’’, a literal term, and 
puts the figurative or spiritual sense in the pro- 
noun “this”, which he calls a spiritual demon- 


24 


tf 


strative. Theologically Schwenkfeld’s view 
may be said to be higher than Zwingli’s, which 
put the emphasis chiefly on the symbolic char- 
acter of the elements, whereas Schwenkfeld 
puts it on the spiritual content of the elements 
after they have been consecrated. / Here, too, | 
he is most nearly allied to Calvin. Both insisted 
that the sacrament makes a real offer to the com- 
municant, not merely of the body and blood of 
Christ, but also of his whole person and his sav- 
ing work.) For both faith is of prime signifi- 
cance, whereas for the Roman Catholic view 
of transubstantiation the sacrament can work 
without personal faith on the part of the reci- 
pient, and whereas both the Roman Catholic 
and the Lutheran views taught the real cor- 
poreal presence in such a sense that even the 
unworthy and the unbelieving can partake of 
the body and blood of Christ. Both Calvin 
and Schwenkfeld made much of the glorified 
humanity of Christ, but with this difference, 
that Calvin insists that the humanity, though 
now glorified, is human, not, as Schwenkfeld 
taught, deified. The main difference between 
Calvin and Schwenkfeld, however, was in the 
conception of faith. Faith with Schwenkfeld 


25 


' was itself a mystical thing, a kind of coming of 
the divine Word into the soul of the believer, 
whereas with Calvin faith is a moral (intellec- 
tual and volitional) act by which a man per- 
sonally appropriates the benefits of the Gospel. 
<As nearly as one can reproduce Schwenkfeld’s 
idea of faith, it seems to have been an implant- 
ing into the soul of the very essence of God. 
That is how he bridges the gap between man 
and God: it is the favorite way of the mystic— 
making the substance of God come into the soul 
of man.) 
To sum up, Schwenkfeld taught that faith is 
a communication of the very nature or essence 
of God to men; justification is not a mere foren- 
sic act whereby God declares the’ believer 
righteous on account of the imputed righteous- 
ness of Christ, but an internal making right- 
eous of the believer; that Christ’s manhood 
does not come from the “‘creaturely” world, but 
is flesh sanctified by Mary’s regeneration, and 
thus made capable, unlike our humanity, of a 
_ progressive deification; and hence no mere ex- 
ternals in religion, whether priesthood, Church, 
sacraments, or the letter of the Bible can take 


26 


) 


the place of the inner, spiritual Word, which is 
the deified humanity of the Mediator. 

One cannot study the life and character of 
Schwenkfeld without one’s mind reverting to 
that great saint and sage, Saint Francis of 
Assisi, who made his. eternal impress on the 
world three hundred years before, and the seven 
hundredth anniversary of whose death is now 
being commemorated’ througHout the world, 
not only by the members of the Cathvlic church, 
but by all who admire sincerity of faith and life. 
He too came of an aristocratic family and had 
infinite prospects of worldly advancement, and 
he too left all for Christ. While he was at the 
opposite ends of the poles from Schwenkfeld 
in many respects, including the matter of an 
organized church and the sacraments and the 
supremacy of the Eicly Father an) Rome; 
Schwenkfeld’s views on the believer’s relation 
to Christ were strangely reminiscent of St. 
Francis. All of you will recall Giotto’s famous 
painting in ve Church of Santa Croce, Flor- 
ence, called “Bidding Farewell to His Father”, . 
picturing the renunciation of his inheritance 
from his father by St. Francis. It would not re- 
quire a great effort of the imagination to think 


Zh 


of it as a picture of Schwenkfeld giving up the 
world and devoting himself to the religious life. 
Ruskin, in his “Mornings in Florence”, 
speaking of the Saint’s renunciation, said: 
“Unless this hardest of deeds be done first—this 
inheritance of the world and mammon be cast 
away—all other deeds are useless. You can 
not serve, can not obey Godand Mammon. No 
charities, no obedience, no self-denials, are of 
any use while you are still at heart in conform- 
ity with the world”. ‘The youthful Kaspar 
might have used the language which St. Francis 
used when he said to his father: “Until now, 
I have called you my father, but now I can truly 
say: ‘Our Father who art in heaven’, for He is 
my wealth, and in Him do I place my hope.” 
One could imagine had the two lived at the 
same time a conversation between them in 
which each absorbed in the love of his Master 
would push aside all minor points of difference. 
We have no evidence that Schwenkfeld was 
especially influenced by St. Francis, but his 
close and intimate relations to Luther in the 
early part of his career would make it highly 
probable that anything which affected Luther 
in regard to St. Francis would have had the 


28 


same influence upon Schwenkfeld, and Luther 
in his “Table Talk” mentioned that St. Francis 
was a just and honest man. While meditating 
in the monastery Luther was deeply impressed 
by the mystics, and said that on the eve of the 
Nativity he imagined that he heard the singing 
of the angelic choir of the annunciation to the 
shepherds. Koestlin, who has written the stand- 
ard life of Luther, states that Tauler’s German 
Theology came to his knowledge; ‘‘Now for the 
first time and in the person of their noblest 
representatives, he was confronted with the 
Christian and theological views of the German 
mysticism of the Middle Ages’. And he was 
so favorably impressed that he published a new 
edition of it with an approving introduction. 
And Prof. Kurtz, in his church history says: 
‘Tuther was powerfully influenced by ‘Tauler’s 
mysticism”. Speaking of Schwenkfeld, he 
says: ‘‘Besides the true evangelican mysticism 
within the church, which Luther his whole life 
esteemed very highly as a deepening of the re- 
ligious life, which the Lutheran church had 
never ruled out of its pale, an unevangelican 
mysticism broke out at quite an early period. 
In the case of Schwenkfeld this tendency occu- 


29 


pied an advantageous position as well from the 
attitude which it aroused to theology as from the 
quiet and sober manner in which it conducted 
its propaganda.” In this study of Schwenk- 
feld, there is a temptation to diverge into a con- 
sideration of the lives and works of the great 
German mystics as Eckhardt, ‘Tauler, Bohme, 
Arndt, Swedenborg, for while they under- 
valued the outward means of grace they did 
seek to dwell in the secret presence of God and 
in their spiritual experiences they often beheld 
the “light that never was on sea or land”. 

And so I have fulfilled my pleasant duty of 
addressing you on this occasion. Your ances- 
tors, like the Hebrews of old, when they arrived 
at the wild and difficult territory, which we 
now enjoy, must have been tempted to recur to 
the words of the Psalmist: “By the rivers of 
Babylon there we sat down, yea we wept when 
we remembered Zion * * * we hanged our 
harps upon the willows * * * how can we 
sing the Lord’s song in a strange land”. But 
like the sturdy men they were, they buckled 
down to the realities of a frontier life and made 
for themselves a name and left a glorious: heri- — 


30 


tage of fine Godfearing people, who are repre- 
sented here to-night. 

I would not venture to engage in a personal 
lecture to so eminent and respected a body, but 
I ask you, and ask myself, what does all this 
mean to us? Does it give us any impetus in 
the direction of a more exalted spiritual life? 
Perhaps the hereditary mystic strain which runs 
through your veins may tend to assist you in 
an effort, even in these non-mystical days, to 
behold with a clearer view the King in His 
beauty. 


1 


The Evening Post Job Priniing Office, inc., 
154 Fulton St., New York, N. Y. 
R1759 


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